


this misery will suffice

by ladyzanra



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Castiel and cars, Coda, Episode Tag, M/M, Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 09:31:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1171474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyzanra/pseuds/ladyzanra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wants Cas here, in this room, right now, wants Cas to help him fix this mess, to make it go away with the touch of two fingers to his forehead, a handprint over the mark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this misery will suffice

Cas ditches the Continental for an ‘Outback Limited’ at the first rest area he comes across. It is a mournful affair, but Sam was right: the Continental drives like a heavy smoker runs. Cas is also vaguely aware that there is something _funny_ about him driving the Continental, and he’s vaguely annoyed that no one told him what it was. It has something to do with prostitutes, yes, but Cas can’t figure out _what,_ exactly.  
  
His new car is a bright blue, the color of his vessel’s tie which he’d left in the laundromat. When the sun shines on it, the paint glitters and splinters into a multitude of different shades. Cas had found this confusing when he’d been trying to concentrate on stealing it. He has a hard enough time distinguishing objects and seeing them as the sum of their parts without them bursting into hundreds of slightly different colors. Cas begins to resent the sun. The way it transforms the landscape, covers it in bright, sparkling smiles to the point where Cas sometimes has difficulty even seeing the road in front of him.  
  
He doesn’t like the inside of the Outback much more than the outside. It’s gray and clunky and cold and it has a large screen of a rotating map that won’t stop talking to him. Technically, he hadn’t needed to pick this car. He could have picked any car in the lot. But the Outback had been the only one with a full tank of gas, and Cas hadn’t wanted to repeat the mistake he’d made on the way to the bunker. He’s still quietly embarrassed about that. So he learns to put up with the seat that’s uncomfortably high and the steering wheel that feels too thick beneath his hands.  
  
The car is also much messier than the Continental had been. All the seats except the driver’s seat are cluttered with items. A day later, and Cas still hasn’t done much with them. The passenger seat sports an iPod and earbuds, an open bag of Sun Chips, several glossy magazines, and a leather jacket draped over the back. In the back seat there are sneakers, scattered pieces of candy, pillows and blankets, and more devices that look like iPods but are bigger and have bigger screens. strained duffle bags swallow up most of the feet space. The trunk, Cas had discovered, is even more crammed: it is full of large bags of food and clothes, smaller bags of toothbrushes and shoes, even a bag of what had appeared to be swimming gear. Cleary, the car had belonged to a group of people going on a trip somewhere; probably a family, Cas thinks.  
  
Family.  
  
Cas pulls the car over to the side of the road. He begins to empty the car of its contents. He throws the bags of clothes, bags of food, the electronic devices, the sneakers, the candies, the Sun Chips down the slope into the sparce forest crawling up this side of the highway.  
  
He does it with his hands instead of with his powers. Even then, it’s too easy. Everything is light in his arms, while also being entangling prisms of colors and shapes, insubstantial yet maddening, like a bad dream. (Cas’d had bad dreams when he’d been human; dreams where nothing had connected or made sense, where the colors ran and the shapes floated, roamed without any meaning, and yet he had still been afraid.)  
  
Finally, the car is empty. Cas leans up against it. He pulls out his phone and opens the contact list. Six of the numbers are for Dean’s various phones, four are for Sam’s. Cas hadn’t needed to put them in the address list to remember them, but he had enjoyed the human activity of using the phone’s proper functions. He thumbs down to the number Dean uses most often.  
  
He could try to call Dean. He wants to call Dean.  
  
Dean should know what Cas is up to. They’re supposed to be a family. This is not the way a family acts, with each of its members going in different directions. Cas doesn’t believe that the separation between Dean and Sam will be permanent, but it makes him uneasy nonetheless. He wants it to be fixed _now_. He wants to tell Dean it doesn’t have to be this way. He’s angry at Dean. The exercise of emptying the car has made him angry or perhaps he only needed a way to let it out, to realize it. He presses the call button.  
  
Then cancels it.  
  
It will not come to anything. Dean won’t listen to him. If there’s any message Castiel has been getting lately, it’s that he is of little help to Dean. His powers are useful, of course, but his words, his thoughts and feelings, are not. They were not enough when Dean decided not to confide in Cas about Sam. They were not enough when Dean declared himself ‘poison’ and drove away. Drove away despite all of Castiel’s help and support. Castiel’s love.  
  
Cas doesn’t understand it, except in the sense that only Sam can really be that close to Dean. _That_ , Cas has understood for a very long time. Cas is no exception to this rule, even though he may be closer to Dean than most. When push comes to shove, it’s Sam who dominates Dean’s actions, Sam against whom Dean fleshes himself out, Sam Dean pays attention to. Sam Dean listens to. Cas had watched their fight on the bridge. Dean had been expecting Sam to stop him from leaving; when Sam hadn’t – Dean had made his decision then. Not before.  
  
Cas is not resentful of Sam or the dynamic. Sam and Dean are brothers. They are _the Winchesters_. They are the fiercest example of human love that Cas knows. Cas isn’t even human. He has no right to try to intrude or throw off the balance, even when the balance is already upset. It is simply a matter of fact. He would have no influence even if he tried. Cas is not resentful of this, either.  
  
But when he remembers his attempts to console Dean, all made in vain, he feels a strange, tight ache in his chest.  
  
He ignores it. He puts the phone in his pocket and gets back in the car. He pulls back onto the highway. The sun is still tediously, loudly bright. If Castiel were still human, he would have a headache. He thinks he _can_ feel one, faintly, squirming in the snug wrap of his vessel’s skull. He ignores this too.  
  
When he finds the angels he is seeking, he will call Sam. Sam had told him to check in more often than that, but Cas has not seen the need for it. It will be good enough simply to call when necessary. He will relay whatever information he is able to get out of the angels about either Metatron or Gadreel. Then he’ll decide what to do from there.  
  
It had been his decision to leave the bunker and wade right in to the mess. He is out in the wilderness again, alone, but it is on his own terms. And he is used to this. He was, perhaps, made for this. For solitude. If he focuses on how fast and easy the road flies past him, if he puts his foot to the gas more, he almost feels a faint sensation of flying.  
  
\--  
  
Dean sits against the headboard of his bed, staring at the text on the screen of his laptop. The words are blurry, they refuse to stay still, his veins are thick and his mind slow with alcohol.  
  
But he can read them.  
  
He’s shaking.  
  
He wants to throw his computer across the room, smash it against the wall, extinguish those bright white spaces between the text, that are both mocking and unbearably aware of him. But he’s afraid of the darkness that will come rushing in at that moment and swallow him.  
  
Cain’s mark burns hotter in the dark, thrums louder in the silence. It survives more furiously when he tries to smother it.  
  
And now he knows what it means, if the information he’s looking at is true.  
  
Maybe he’s dreaming. Maybe this is all a bad dream. Except, fuck, he knows it isn’t. The knowledge is too complete, the words in front of him too coherent, despite how badly his brain tries to mangle them.  
  
A prayer wells up in him, grasping, gasping, desperate as a child’s. He hasn’t prayed to Cas since… Kevin. Since Gadreel taking off in Sam’s body. He hasn’t even spoken to Cas since the bridge. Scratch that, he hadn’t talked to him on the bridge either. Merely looked over, as if, he doesn’t know, maybe he thought Cas was gonna stop him. (Cas hadn’t.)  
  
He wants Cas here, in this room, right now, wants Cas to help him fix this mess, to make it go away with the touch of two fingers to his forehead, with a handprint over the mark.  
  
He wants Cas’s gentle, fierce, earnest eyes and the way he leans forward when he says _you were stupid for the right reasons_. He wants Cas’s quiet, unwavering belief that Dean is a good man, a righteous man.  
  
The prayer dies in Dean’s heart.  
  
Dean had no good reasons for this. He could try to argue that killing Abbadon is always a good reason, but Cas would see through it because Dean would only be able to defend himself half-heartedly. Whatever Dean says, Cas will know the truth. Dean doesn’t need to tell the angel who raised him out of Hell that he went and did his damn hardest to send himself back. Doesn’t need the look on Cas’s face, the sharp isolation of Cas’s surprise, Cas being hurt or Cas being angry.  
  
Doesn’t need Cas to go and forgive him anyway, like he will. Like he always does.  
  
Besides, there’s no guarantee that Cas even _could_ fix this. He hadn’t been able to undo what the Trials had done to Sam. The likelihood he’d be able to get rid of the mark of Cain? Probably not actually as good as Dean had first thought.  
  
Dean doesn’t throw the computer across the room. He gets up, turns the floor lamp on with fingers that are still shaking, and then shuts his computer down. He sits back on the bed and tips his head back and lets the liquor slide down, down his throat. He leans his elbows on his knees.  
  
He did this to himself. He’ll deal with it himself or it will eat him alive. When he realizes it’s that simple, his anger turns cold, turns quiet. His fear sinks deep into his bones and disperses, thins out until it’s almost like it isn’t even there. He’ll tell Sam what he found out about the mark tomorrow. Or he won’t. He has no intention of lying. He just doesn’t care one way or the other. Sam’s already pretty much turned his back on Dean, and Dean doesn’t blame him for it. Sam won’t save him from this and he shouldn’t have to.  
  
Dean deserves to be what he’s most afraid of. He deserves to be alone.


End file.
